Incendiary
by Perivates
Summary: Focuses on Elicia's desire to avenge her father. Written for Prima Materia's SueCross Contest last summer. Warnings for teenaged Elicia and a bit of gross imagery towards the end.


**(- Kindling -)**

The nighttime shadows shrouded the hall, turning warm familiarity to unknown territory. The scent of dinner--mother's cooking always was wonderful; the mere thought of her delicacies could easily rouse an appetite--had long ago faded. In its place was the cool smell of summer grass, thick with rain from an earlier storm. The kitchen window was partially opened, and a gentle breeze guided the hum of crickets and cicadas down the hall, to the living room where the young girl who lived there lay sprawled before the sofa. Moonlight poured in from the closed window before her, illuminating the glossy pages beneath her fingers.

The grandfather clock struck a brief chord, signaling the time as quarter-after-something. The late hour did not matter to the girl, nor did her plans for the following day (or later that day, as it may have been). All that existed for her were the images in the photo album, the ones that her mother kept hidden away.

Mother wasn't aware that she knew where the album was "hidden," nor did she know of her daughter's frequent nighttime visits to see the man in the photographs. If she knew, she surely would have hidden them someplace more difficult to access than the underside of the sofa.

_"You shouldn't look at those," her mother had scolded once as she looked not at, but past the album perched upon sunburned knees. "It's better to move forward than keep looking to the past."_ And yet, she had caught her mother on numerous accounts peeking at the photographs through tearful eyes, when she thought her daughter was too sleepy or sick with fever to notice.

But how could she _not _look to a past that she could barely recall, yet longed so very much to hold onto? If she looked at the photographs for long enough, sometimes she could remember--almost _feel _--the comfortable scratch of her father's dark beard against her cheek, a calloused hand wrapped protectively _(warmly)_ around her own much smaller hand. Sometimes she thought she could remember the tone of his laughter. Everyone said how much her father loved to laugh... but how he loved even more to talk about her. His sweet little Elicia.

_I wish you were here._

Certainly she appreciated all her mother did for her. Being a single mother wore on Gracia Hughes in more ways than her daughter could witness, but for what she did see, Elicia could tell that there was some _spark _missing in her mother--something she had not felt from her since she was very young.

_Not since they put daddy in the ground..._

Even so, Elicia felt a distance growing between herself and her mother. She thought that perhaps it was simply the normal result of being a teenager. After all, her classmates voiced regular complaints of how their parents never understood them, how they weren't as close they used to be.

But... this was different. She did not feel that she didn't _get _her mother; far from it. Elicia understood her mother's pain. She knew what it was that kept her up late into the night, sobbing softly into her pillow and thinking her child could not hear her. She knew that despair, that desperate longing for something impossibly far from reach; that same chasm had opened its gaping maw beneath her, sucking her into its abyss.

Yet, no matter how she longed for her father, her sensibilities told her she was being nothing more than a scared, lonely little girl. _'Daddy's not coming back for you, sweetheart,'_ her mind spoke softly in the night, between the whispers of cicadas and the wind. _'He can't pick you up and hold you high above your demons. Those are_ yours _to face.'_

Demons... like the one that murdered her father.

_(Murderer, thief, destroyer...)_

Cold fire slithered down her spine, tracing its familiar path between her shoulders down to the small of her back, where it pooled into her abdomen. When she was younger, she did not know what this feeling was--but as she grew, she came to realize that it was the feeling of intense hatred. She had initially been appalled. Hate was a _bad _thing, she had always been told; it was a feeling avoided by those who were good, and she was a _good girl._ Elicia had been so distraught over her feelings that she had gone so far as to try and convince herself that she did not hate the homunculus at all; she had even dared utterances of affection for him, much to her mother's horror.

A soft pattering pulled Elicia from her thoughts and guided her eyes downward. Tears puddled over a photo of a very small Elicia perched upon her father's broad shoulders, the two smiling brightly at the camera. She swiped the salty liquid away from both the page and her face, and closed the album.

_"Hate the sin, not the sinner," _adults always said, in that holier than thou tone often heard in such expressions. But in this case, the Sin _was _the sinner. Since realizing this a few years back, Elicia had accepted the hatred she held in her heart--even clung to it at times, wallowing in it. As if doing so would somehow bring her father back.

She could never bring him back; that much she knew for certain. But, it was...

_(It isn't fair! Daddy, I need you, daddy... How could he take you from me? Why?!)_

Unacceptable. It was _unacceptable _that her father's killer roamed free, no doubt unleashing terror on countless others, while she had no closure. Her life had been turned upside down all because of a senseless act of violence that never should have happened. Her father should have been there with her, to watch her grow up, to support and love her and her mother. He deserved the life he'd had. But that homunculus... he didn't deserve even the life-without-life he had.

It should have been _him _who died.

Elicia tucked the photo album back into its hiding place beneath the sofa, before rolling over onto her back. Her hands linked behind her head, tangling in her messy dark locks. They had been lighter, almost golden when she was little, but as the years passed, her hair had come to more closely resemble her father's coloring than her mother's. A few years ago--when her color had first started to darken--her mother had suggested having her hair dyed. Mother's voice did not say it, but her eyes spoke the message clearly enough: _You look so much like your father. It hurts too much to look at you._ But Elicia did not consent to changing her hair color; she could not bear to change the color that was _his._

Her eyes wandered across the room, falling wherever the moonlight shone in the darkness. The bright pinpricks of light glimmered like the teeth of a prowling animal, snarling and ready to pounce--but all that could attack her here were the sharp barbs of her father's memory. The blades of her father's throwing knives atop the mantle pointed toward the window, almost accusatively.

If knives could speak, Elicia was certain of the words they would choose._ 'We shouldn't be resting here, collecting dust. We should be out_ there, _hunting he who killed our master.'_

Or perhaps this was Elicia's mind casually slipping its inward feelings onto something external, something blameless. No one could blame the knives for not seeking revenge, for what were they but tools guided only by the whims of whoever threw them? But she, she was not blameless. Here she sat, in the comfortability of her own home, desiring something but making no motion to bring it about. _Nothing but a lazy coward._

_(Unacceptable.)_

Soft footfalls upon hardwood, the creak of hinges, slamming door against doorjamb--chirping insects and gusting breeze; she sensed all of these things, but only as one might hear the world from underwater, and for all it mattered, everything else may as well have been submerged in another realm. The only reality that remained was the vengeance Elicia sought.

That, and the cool weight of the knives in her pants' pockets.

* * *

**(- Sparks -)**

Elicia was not certain how much time had passed, but the pink tinge creeping along the underbelly of low-lying clouds told her the dawn was swiftly approaching.

She lifted one of the knives, slick and warm with sweat from hours upon hours of labored practice, and held it up so that the pre-dawn light danced along the blade's edge. If only that bright color were blood, the blood of her enemy, rather than something so intangible as light...

Part of her knew that such thoughts were bad; wishing ill on anyone, even that evil homunculus, was _wrong_. But another part, a stronger part, did not care.

_He deserves worse. How many people... how many innocent lives has he destroyed? It's only right, only fair. Someone needs to stop him._

Stop him, or kill him? They were the same. No difference between the two remained, but that one held a firmer ring of finality, and that was what she wanted--no, _needed_.

It was dangerous, and most likely foolish--this much she knew. Attacking an homunculus was the equivalent of begging for a brutal, abrupt death.

And yet...

It was the only thing that made any sense to her, as insensible as it was. Going along with life as it was, pretending normalcy and forcing memories away into well-worn secret rooms only to be opened later when no one else could see... that was no longer an option. Elicia had burned down those rooms as soon as the cool touch of the knives had seeped into her skin, deep into her bones, and now there was no place left to hide.

Burning, burning, brightly burning. Oh, how she could imagine that homunculus screaming, twisting. writhing among the flames she longed to sear him with. His cries would be her thunderous applause: _Well done, well done. Death for death, his life for my life for yours. And now, where will you go?_

Once he was gone, it would all be over. The deaths he'd handed out would not be undone, and Elicia would never have her father back, but it would at least be _over_.

And that was all she wanted, wasn't it?

* * *

**(- Blaze -)**

Hours of practice with the knives grew into countless days; days of planning turned to tedious, frustrating months. The practicing was not the problem. In fact, the only explanation she could devise for her rapidly developed skill was a genetic _gift _passed down from her father (though she did suspect that this theory may have been influenced by one too many of Uncle Armstrong's stories of his own family's traditions). Speed and accuracy with the short blades came naturally to her, and even so, she continued to practice religiously; she could not risk dependency upon luck over reflexive skill.

But even as she prepared for her intended confrontation, Elicia did not know _how _such a confrontation could come about. Search and research much as she may, all her leads either died or led in so many directions that it would be impossible to consider it anything but a wild goose chase. She had asked her "extended family," her father's friends in the military, but they refused to speak of anything regarding the homunculi.

_"All military documentation on these creatures is strictly confidential."_ That was all they would say, but she knew that was not all there had been to it. They didn't want her to get hurt; they wouldn't dare give here information that could lead her into danger, not after their comrade's fall. However, that concern was more a source of frustration than comfort.

Elicia became so fixated upon finding Envy (though she would never speak his name; that would be humanizing him, and he was nothing of the sort) that she did not know what, exactly, it was she planned on doing once he was found. Oh, she would certainly kill him, that was never disputed for a moment in her mind. But would it be a direct attack? Or would she creep up on him, try to catch him unaware? Would she make a false, friendly approach, only to kill him once she was near enough?

Whenever these questions surged in her mind, Elicia simply turned them aside. _How _she would do it was not important for now--she was entirely consumed with the question of _when _it would pass.

_(Soon, soon, it must be soon...)_

* * *

**(- Flicker -)**

Never, not for one moment, did the possibility of the homunculus being the one to find _her _figure into Elicia's plans. Not until that very moment arrived.

It would not even have registered in her mind who the man approaching her was, had the circumstances been different. Green hair and pallid skin were masked beneath short dark hair and glasses that seemed to steal the light from the sun. But two things--undoubtedly intentional--told his true identity.

One was the pair of cruel, lavender eyes behind those lenses perched so casually on the curve of his nose.

The other was the sight of _Maes Hughes_ walking toward her.

Fear and rage swiftly rose to arms and battled for dominance, ignoring the nausea that would be dealt with later. Fingers twitched at her pockets; the urge to draw the knives and immediately turn the bastard into a pincushion tempted every nerve in her body.

But this was all _wrong! _She was supposed to find him, it wasn't supposed to be like this! Only one thought pushed through the warring emotions within her:

_He's come to kill me, hasn't he?_

"You've made a nuisance of yourself." The words slipped through a smile, too broad to be mistaken as kind. "I don't normally go out of my way to kill stupid humans, but in your case, I'll make an exception."

"H..." The sound stuck in Elicia's throat. It came out as a choked wheeze, before finally exploding forth. How _dare _you?!" Unspent sobs threatened to wrack her small frame, but she remained as still as she could, save tremblings of rage.

The smile twisted into an inquisitive yet cocky smirk. "Oh? How dare I... use this face, you mean?" Envy reached up, snatching away the unnecessary frames before his eyes. "The same way I dared to take your mother's image before killing this guy, I'd imagine."

_(Kill him, kill him, don't wait, don't think, just KILL HIM)_

No more words, no more caution. Rage flared, and fear became irrelevant; a knife darted through the air before Elicia was even aware of completing the thought to reach into her pocket.

But with nothing more than a slight turn of the head, Envy avoided the lethal projectile. It didn't even graze his ear.

"Did you _really _expect to kill me?" The homunculus _tsk_ed, as if chiding a silly child rather than someone who had just _thrown a knife_ at his head.

But then... she really was just a silly child to him, wasn't she? Just another useless, stupid human. Waste of life. Something to throw away as easily as a doll discarded by a distracted child, cherished only moments earlier before casual abandonment.

Would he kill her with that same flippancy? Just another pound of flesh to add to the rotting heap...

But of course he would. Humans were all the same to him. There was no difference between Elicia and her father, between any other person to suffer at the demon's hands. Only, she'd walked into this. She knew this could _(would)_ happen, she damned well knew it, but she had pushed on anyway.

A hand whipped out; fingers chilled with undeath dug into skin, pushing until muscles screamed and delicate vertebrae scraped against each other. Gasps for air died at the back of the girl's mouth as lungs begged for one precious breath.

_(Idiot... you were a real idiot, you know that?)_

"You humans are all so stupid," Envy sneered, disgust apparent in the way he scrunched his nose, as though a foul smell burned it. Undoubtedly, he must've been disgusted by the very fact that he was touching one of the filthy humans. "Just _look _at yourself--your old man put up more of a fight than this."

_(Let go, let go, let me GO--_

_I need to kill you--_

_Mom, I can't leave mom, she can't--)_

A sickening squelch erupted in Elicia's ears. She was vaguely aware of a warm wetness in her throat, and then...

_Nothing_.

* * *

**(- Embers -)**

What was that god-awful stench...?

A soft flurry of nerves, tickled by life (was that truly what is was?); there was _feeling _but no sense of existing beyond the brief sensation, like a dreamer awakening from a long sleep.

But then there was pain, all-consuming, blazing _pain _and whatever dream might have been shattered into forgotten shards of memory.

It was as though every fiber of her being was on fire, licked by flames and swallowed by the sun; she was melting, truly melting within herself. _Drip, drip, drip,_ each echo of liquid pieces of herself falling to the floor crashed in her ears, or whatever remained of them.

Her eyes had been shut, squeezed tightly in agony. She didn't realize this until the lids slid from her eyes, falling to join the rest of dregs piling beneath her. When forced to look upon herself, _whatever _she was, she would have screamed, had her mouth not been a gaping hole. Toothless and tongueless, barely able to breathe... or was she breathing at all? How could she have been, when Hell was so clearly embracing the remains of her shell?

And then there was a laugh--a voice she recognized, that gave her all the more reassurance she had been damned to Hell.

"Pitiful. I couldn't say which is worse, that sorry attempt of an attack, or this _hideous _form of yours."

Beyond the words, deeper into the shadows (where was she; what was happening?), a trail of moans weaved in notes of despair and abject suffering. This voice too was familiar, though she couldn't quite place it.

"Stupid Elric whelp... just as stupid as his _prodigy _of a brother." As spiteful as the words were, they were distinctly laced with a note of glee. "You humans never learn, do you?"

Elric... Al? The name meant something, something important, but she couldn't remember what. But with each wail from the darkness came another wave of pain through her oozing form. _(Shut up, shut UP, shut the fuck up, leave me alone!)_

"Well, not that you're _human _anymore," Envy amended. "But you're still a damned fool."

_Not human...?_

She must have looked confused, if that were even possible in her deformity, because Envy then spoke: "Oh, don't you know?"

Lips curled back into a sneer; dagger-sharp teeth glimmered in the darkness.

"You're like me, now. An homunculus."


End file.
